Friday, February 15, 2019

Storm creates chaos in California with flooding, mudslides


Made worse by the fact that global warming has caused an increase in the moisture content of air.

https://www.apnews.com/86acb18aa1d44ca6a5213e4a37f9887b?fbclid=IwAR1UCHZvQzDQ_UbANvi66CyguK5UIIqfczDgk5z09pZBvh3TjtIO8fiEOPo

By TERENCE CHEA and JOHN ANTCZAK

Waves of heavy rain pounded California on Thursday, trapping people in floodwaters, washing away a mountain highway, triggering a mudslide that destroyed homes and forcing residents to flee communities scorched by wildfires last year.

At least two people died as the powerful system swept in from the Pacific Ocean and unleashed damaging rain, snow and wind.

The system was moving across the U.S. West into Wyoming and Colorado after walloping Northern California and southern Oregon a day earlier.

The National Weather Service reported staggering rainfall amounts across California, including more than 9.4 inches (24 centimeters) over 48 hours at one location in the San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles.

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North of San Francisco, a mudslide barreled over cars, uprooted trees and sent a home sliding down a hill and smashing into another house in Sausalito.

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The storm followed more than a week of severe weather in the Pacific Northwest and was the latest in a series of storms that has all but eliminated drought-level dryness in California this winter. It’s fueled by an atmospheric river — a plume of moisture stretching across the Pacific Ocean nearly to Hawaii.

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Atmospheric rivers are long bands of water vapor that form over an ocean and flow through the sky. Formed by winds associated with storms, they occur globally but are especially significant on the West Coast.

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